10 Pfennigs

Wetzlar's Notgeld issues of 1918 came at the height of Germany's small-change crisis, when wartime metal requisitioning had stripped coins from everyday commerce almost entirely. Municipal and commercial bodies across the Reich stepped in to fill the gap, and Wetzlar — a small Hessian city better known for its optics industry and its Goethe associations — was among hundreds of local issuers printing their own emergency fractions. The Stadt Wetzlar series was printed locally by Scharfes Druckereien, keeping production costs down and turnaround fast.

These low-denomination municipal issues were designed to be spent quickly and discarded, not saved. Survival rates vary considerably, but 10 Pfennig notes from small-city issuers tend to be underrepresented in collections relative to the better-documented larger denominations.